Is the World of Warcraft community bad? And should we feel bad?

I just got finished reading this article entitled, The Warcraft Community is Bad and We Should Feel Bad and it made me think about the times that I'd done something similar: that is, kicking someone out of group because they were poorly geared or slow to respond or telling PUG raid leaders not to accept certain people because they were "bad" or "poorly geared trash."

In retrospect, should I feel bad for doing that? Is it our responsibility as gamers to help out our fellow gamer just looking to escape the doldrums of real life? After all, we were all noobs once.

"Somewhere along the line, these basic ideals of the game that made it the most popular online game ever shifted significantly. The thirst for adventure has been replaced with a demand for efficiency."

This quote rings out truest. And while the community is certainly to blame for this mentality, Blizzard only added kindling to this fire by catering to it in every possible way.

And while I agree that these things Blizzard has been doing in the name of efficiency, I don't think there's anything they can do to remove it/go back to the old way of playing simply because they've already gotten players used to one playstyle and going to another is going to tick a lot of players off. I know 5.2 with true "tiering" of raid tiers is going to show this to be true.

Last edited by Flaks; 2013-02-19 at 05:05 PM.

Originally Posted by High Overlord Saurfang

"I am he who watches they. I am the fist of retribution. That which does quell the recalcitrant. Dare you defy the Warchief? Dare you face my merciless judgement?"

Typically, the community is pretty bad, but at the same time, as a whole it's bad, the individuals aren't.

Met plenty of people in game that I have enjoyed playing with, met nice players all the time, but the ones that just piss you off always stand out to you in a strong way. I mean, I can't count how many times I've found somebody that just infuriated me. But at the same time, I know I'd remember them more because they did invoke more emotion than a nice moment from somebody else.

I mean, I personally believe the amount of players and the lack of accountability for players actions (which is true in almost every online game) contributes to the bad attitude of some players, but when you are forced to work together and a person just doesn't give a damn (or gives too much of a damn) they will have much worse attitudes. Random Battlegrounds are my personal low point community wise in WoW.

Usually I have the mindset Roggles have, I am typically polite, nice and don't rage at people, I occasionally only call out others when they are assholes.

"Somewhere along the line, these basic ideals of the game that made it the most popular online game ever shifted significantly. The thirst for adventure has been replaced with a demand for efficiency."

This quote rings out truest. And while the community is certainly to blame for this mentality, Blizzard only added kindling to this fire by catering to it in every possible way.

This is the truest part.

Also, Blizzard pretty much encourages horrible behavior every chance they get, through game mechanics. It's more efficient and profitable to screw people in your faction over, rather than playing with them, outside of raids/PVP, for example. Not to mention how people in Blizzard itself seem to conduct themselves in the public's eye, like that one guy who insulted the Diablo 2 dude :x

What this game needs is something like the Tribunal in League of Legends. Which actually has a community WORSE than WoW's, but at least people get punished for it :x WoW? Someone with toxic attitudes get to succeed, and succeed more!

The infamous warrior in the thread the article was apparently sparked by (jesus, it's like 3 clicks away, I traveled far) came off to me as rather dull. Poor guy, but I haven't patience to deal with dull people in any walks of life, leisure especially.
My guild tries to set up alt runs as much as it can anyways, though recruitment gets a bit rough for those since MoP is so anti-alt that very few of our people who could help carry the raid have any raid-viable characters. I'm willing to deal with people who don't know WoW, but I don't deal with overall dull.

That said, the demand for efficiency is absolutely ruthless in this game. People demand absolutely ridiculous things. There was a huge thread over yonder crying that Trolls will do 5% more dps on a few bosses in Thunder Crown Citadel (or w/e), demanding nerfs for fairness so everything fits into a neat little pile. And then no doubt the same people turn around and wonder where the magic went.
You can't make magic from a machine. If the world is going to feel raw, like a world, there can't be brightly colored circles around everything telling you where to stand.

Most people that are terribly geared, not playing their class right because they didn't have 5 minutes to go online and look it up, or just overall not really carrying their weight, also don't want your advice. I have tried to help in the past, and if someone is really struggling with something and being unfairly attacked by some egomaniac then I will step in and try to help. However, if someone is doing everything wrong and acting like an idiot, then wants to be a douche about it, they deserve to be kicked from the game and have their account suspended.

The wow comunity is bad to a vast degree. The anonymity created by the fake identity of your screen name leads players to do and say things that they would honestly not like the reprocussions of if they were to do them in a real life situation.

No, I don't feel terrible. I'm generally helpful, polite and in six or seven years now in the game, I don't think I've ever insulted anyone deliberately. People who dismiss this sort of thing as 'expected' or whatever should raise their expectations a bit. Anyone trying to justify being rude and abusive is more likely an offender than not. It's simply not OK because 'everyone else does it'.

People wrongly like to blame Blizzard because someone else acts badly. In the end each one of us is responsible for our own behavior.

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Treat me like anyone else unless you're breaking rules or we need to do site business. I play. I have likes and dislikes. We're not that different.

All the "get a group now!" tools make playing efficiently much easier, but connecting with people in a way more meaningful than "do your job so we can get this over with" has been lost in the transition. There have always been people with that attitude anyway, and always will be, but it sucks that the people you're meeting in dungeons and even the world are likely people you will never see again and whom you can neither friend nor guild with if you enjoy their company.

The cross-server implementation is only part way done and the community is suffering for it. They need to find a way to span mail, AH, /who, chat, guilds, etc... cross-server and create one large community (per server type) with zones instanced as needed to control population (like they do now, except instead of merging servers to increase population divide the server to spread the population out a bit, with a feature to join a party leader in their instance when grouped). BioWare has commented on doing this exact thing (and technologically they are pretty close already) with TOR.

They'd probably need to expand the unique character identifier some, because available names would be a problem. Sirnames seem like an obvious solution, but may not be the only one.

Is the wow community bad? For the most part yes. Should we feel bad? No, it's blizzard's fault that the community is the way it is.

Wait.. you just blamed your actions on a company? Are you not responsible for your own actions/thoughts and what you say to people? That's Blizzard's fault, they made you act this way?

Listen, what this comes down to is anonymity. People that play video games online have no one to answer to but themselves so they can act out any aggression they have through the game and direct it at others. There used to be this thing in WoW where you could report someone that was harassing you and they'd actually get a ban etc. Hell, even I had racked up a few offenses in my early Vanilla/TBC days. Today though, it feels like a joke to report someone. You know nothing happens to them nowadays.

All together, I believe it to be a cultural dysfunction stemming from living in an "online life". Everyone is on Facebook. Everyone is on Twitter. Look at how much drama goes unpunished on those sites. No one is accountable for anything there unless you end up making someone commit suicide and then your face ends up on CNN. People have this internet cool/tough guy syndrome that's just way the hell out of line in my opinion. The only thing you can do to curb it is to hang out with or only play with people you're friends with IRL. At least then if your friend Timmy cocks off an attitude thinking he's better than you while playing WoW, you can go put him in his place the next time you see him.

I have to say, I do miss the comradery that WoW used to have. I started playing in late Vanilla, early BC and I just can't get over how much the community has changed.

In regards to your question, I do believe the it is bad and I think we should only blame ourselves. After all, we are all responsible for our own actions, even if Blizz sets us up for failure.

That's because if you were an asshole on your realm, eventually it would get to a point where no one would group with you anymore. That left you with no other option but to reroll because there were no transfers, names changes, etc. These days you can be as big of a dick as you want to with no consequences anymore, and yes, it's 100% Blizzard's fault with all the LFD/LFR/CRZ crap.